No more Tolkien films after The Battle of the Five Armies, says Peter Jackson

[Freya]

Gandalf – we mean, Ian McKellen – raised Tolkien fans’ hopes recently when he said he thought Peter Jackson would return to Middle Earth but now, the Oscar-winning director has quashed all hopes of a Hobbit trilogy follow-up. Speaking at a press conference yesterday, Jackson explained that for legal reasons, he would not be bringing any more of Tolkien’s work to the big screen.

“The Tolkien estate owns the writings of Professor Tolkien – The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings were sold by Professor Tolkien in the late Sixties, the film rights,” the New Zealand filmmaker said. “But they are the only two works of his that have been sold. So without the cooperation of the Tolkien estate, there can’t be more films.”

Although The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit are Tolkien’s most famous works by far, he wrote many other stories about Middle Earth including pre-history The Silmarillion. Surely after the huge success of his five Tolkien movies (soon to be six when The Battle of the Five Armies is released next week), the estate would help Jackson out? Quite possibly not.

“Tolkien has become a monster, devoured by his own popularity and absorbed by the absurdity of our time,” Tolkien’s son Christopher told Le Monde in 2012. “The chasm between the beauty and seriousness of the work and what it has become has overwhelmed me. The commercialisation has reduced the aesthetic and philosophical impact of the creation to nothing. There is only one solution for me: to turn my head away.”

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So no Silmarillion movie, sorry fans.

[Madame Adequate]

But Silmarillion! It has so much scope for building on the Legendarium and exploring parts of the mythology that most people overlook!

That guy's a prick.

[Tavrobel]

Scope means nothing. A Silmarillion movie would suck anyway.

If you really wanted to adapt the Silmarillion, it would have to be a TV series. Even then,
the stories in the Silmarillion are so prudish and ultra-conservative that they would have no mass market appeal. Christopher's stance against commercialization is pretty dickish but it's pretty consistent.

Christopher has said in the past that he disliked the Jackson interpretations of the first trilogy. There were some liberties that Jackson took in adapting the work from written to visual media that probably don't sit well with the estate's interpretation of the work (e.g., Faramir). The Hobbit adaptations probably come off as much worse in this regard (e.g., Tauriel) to Christopher.

Maybe it's a disappointment, but it's nothing new to me. The only people who are surprised by this are bandwagon fans who will move onto the next hot thing by next year.

[Slothy]

The Silmarillion is probably the one that'd have been more interesting to me since I've always felt that Tolkein was a better world builder than story teller from what I've read of his work. That said, I won't be particularly sad if Jackson doesn't get to make more movies because while I liked the LotR trilogy, the Hobbit movies are pretty bad on many levels. Only real thing I like about them is getting to watch Martin Freeman and Ian McKellan on screen. The rest of it is bleh.

[Shorty]

GOOD

Peter Jackson is on par with the atrocities George Lucas has inflicted to his own films. He just needs to be taken away from them. I completely agree with poor Christopher Tolkien and feel awful for him.

[Jinx]

Agreed. And I haven't even READ The Silmarillion.

Most people who know me fairly well know that the LotR movies are my all time favorite movies. I do understand why there's some anger over the changes made, but I think overall it kept the integrity of its source.

Now, I haven't seen any of The Hobbit movies, but they look smurfing awful, and I've really only heard bad things about them. Plus it's like 99% CGI, where as the original movies used a lot of non-CGI effects.

[Slothy]

Yeah, Weta used to know how to strike a good balance between traditional and digital effects. But the Hobbit movies have had far more 3D than traditional effects. I actually have a hard time remembering any traditional effects of note in them. And it's only made worse by the fact that the 3D in the movies has been terrible. Somehow the second being even worse than the first.

[Del Murder]

A Silmarillion HBO series would be pretty cool but it wouldn't work as a movie. Also after seeing what he did with The Hobbit I'm not in any hurry to get in line for another Jackson take on Tolkien's world. Lord of the Rings was excellent and he should have just stopped there and let someone else do Hobbit.

[Colonel Angus]

PJ didn't even want to do the Hobbit movies. Then they took what was supposed to be 2 movies and turned it into a trilogy. But he didn't even want to make it in the first place.

BTW, there's only 14 more pages in the book.

[Newmani]

In all fairness I don't think you COULD make a movie of The Simarillion. It's a series of stories as long as the Lord of the Rings but squished into maybe a couple of paragraphs each. That may seem like an exaggeration but it really isn't; the Lord of the Rings spans three whole books but in the Simarillion the entire trek is condensed into a single sentence. Imagine how big the preceding stories are? There's a boatload of them too.

[Bubba]

Yeah, after the Hobbit films I think they should definitely put a stop to any more. There are some great scenes in the Hobbit films but there are some truly awful ones as well (the god-awful barrel escape from DOS springs to mind). The Lord of the Rings is my favourite film trilogy of all time and I was so disappointed in the way they approached The Hobbit. As soon as I heard it was being split into three films I knew there was no hope.

I haven't read The Silmarillion but I think we're done with Middle Earth for a while. I will occasionally watch The Hobbit films if they come on TV but I will continue to masturbate furiously over the LOTR Extended Blu Rays.

[Ergroilnin]

To be honest, the Hobbit movies aren't that bad for me since I don't mind that much when movies don't exactly follow the books BUT what I really hate about them is all the CGI, it honestly looks horrendous... The LotR looked much better, if they made it the same way, I would've loved the movies.

[Jinx]

but I will continue to masturbate furiously over the LOTR Extended Blu Rays.

same

[Skyblade]

I'm joining the majority here.

The Silmarillion would not work as a movie. It would be difficult to pull off as a TV show. We don't need more Middle Earth movies.

Also, Peter Jackson has pretty much ruined The Hobbit. Not only did he vastly overextend the story beyond the scope of the kid's book it was, but he inserted his own horribly out of place elements to pad it. He changed the tone, characters, and world.

[Rocket Edge]

I can't relate like some of you as I never read LoTR and I can't remember reading the Hobbit, but an extension into the world of middle earth I'd find interesting.

Didn't Ian McKellen say that there was a possibility of more films lately?